This Christmas, Expect To Cringe And Groan
We’ve dated swords (Boyfriend Dungeon), toasters (Date Everything!) and pigeons (Hatoful Boyfriend), so it almost feels normal cosying up to Santa and trying to get into his pantaloons. Why not, eh? You have to shoot your shot.
Too Many Santas! doesn’t waste time on foreplay. You’re the manager of a failing department store (going by the screenshots, we can see why it’s ‘70s interiors are failing) and a Christmas wish leads to six strapping Santas appearing to help. You’ve magicked them out of your imagination, and it’s never entirely clear how they relate to Real Santa.
I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus
In a bold commitment to alliteration, you welcome Saintly Santa, Sassy Santa, Sexy Santa, Secret Santa, Sad Santa and Sleepy Santa to your store. They are five guys and one gal, and your main character is curiously more interested in wooing them than the initial objective of saving the store.
So, in visual novel format, with some posed photographs of the Santas, you get to pick your Santa and begin the seduction. We went for Sad Santa first, and aimed for the Nice Ending rather than the Naughty Ending, as the Santas are packaged with one each.
As you can probably tell from the title, Too Many Santas! doesn’t take itself very seriously. Sexy Santa takes off his top to let the adults onto his lap rather than the children. Sassy Santa keeps whipping out yo mama jokes. It’s medium-raunchy, which actually makes it less porny than the Eastern visual novels we get on Xbox.
I’m not convinced it’s funny, though. I feel a bit Grinchy writing it, but – at least to me – the needle keeps pointing more towards Cringe than Chuckles. About fifty percent of the jokes rely on each Santa’s prefix. Sleepy Santa has fallen asleep again; Sad Santa is thoroughly depressed; Saintly Santa is lecturing customers on the commercialised nature of modern Christmas. It’s a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves approach, which is fine, but not as funny as Too Many Santas! thinks it is, considering the proportions.
Bah humbug! I’m not saying that Too Many Santas! can’t be funny: some of the Sassy Santa put downs are quite sharp, and there’s some nice meta stuff in there about a rival video game shop. But it’s just a little safe and wince-inducing, when I was all-in for something more surreal, raunchy or abstract perhaps.
So, if Too Many Santas! isn’t that funny, does it raise some goosebumpy feelings of romance? Does it lean into the lurve?
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping
Credit to Too Many Santas! for not automatically choosing supermodels as their dates. These are normal, sometimes older or more rotund, people. Most of these posed characters worked on the game (Saintly Santa is the writer, Secret Santa the programmer), which adds an odd layer to the romancing. We can only imagine what the writer was thinking when they added lines about flirting with themselves.
But while these are refreshingly achievable dates, they’re not likeable. I mean, you might find one or two oddly endearing, but they’re so clearly cartoonish that romance never really comes into it. It’s like dating Wile E. Coyote or Johnny Bravo. Plus there’s the odd disconnect that you’ve known them for literally two hours. The sudden movement to love, hanky panky and even marriage is so farcical that you can’t take it seriously.
If it’s not funny or titillating, then what’s left? The writer has a go at a bit of a morality play. Each of the Santas clearly has something wrong with them, so what do you do? Do you try to change them, or do you enable their issues? Through visual novel choices, you determine whether Sassy Santa learns to not slag off customers, and whether Secret Santa stops leaving in a puff of smoke at the sign of any difficulty.
But this doesn’t work really, either. The writer is caught between a rock and a hard place: they want laughs, so they’re flippant about everything, but there’s some genuine issues to wrestle with about growing and learning. In the end, to get a Nice Ending, you’re often overlooking or enabling each Santa’s faults, accepting who they are even if they bankrupt your business and piss off a lot of people. These endings never quite align into something satisfying, and are often too sudden.
Not A Feeling Was Stirring…
Gosh, I feel like such a Scrooge for beating up on Too Many Santas! It’s not as if it’s aiming to be Doki Doki Literature Club! or anything. This is a harmless candy cane (Jesus Cane – thank you Saintly Santa) that was clearly made with passion and a bag of chuckles by a few people and their mates.
But (Scrooge incoming) I can’t ignore the dislike I had for most of the characters and the blizzards of cringiness that swept by. My wife passed by once and wondered if I was in pain. So, while Too Many Santas! is a cutely ramshackle visual novel, it’s also about as sexy and funny as a Christmas Cracker joke.
Important Links
Too Many Santas! Brings Chaotic Christmas Romance To Xbox & PlayStation – https://www.thexboxhub.com/too-many-santas-brings-chaotic-christmas-romance-to-xbox-playstation/
Buy Too Many Santas! on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/too-many-santas/9N23VP2362V1
